Stampede

When I’m out walking I often pass fields of cattle. In general they either stare dolefully or run off when I look at them. Recently though, I was walking alongside one field and, at my appearance, the cattle ran to one side of the field, formed a group and then thundered down the hill toward me. When they got close, they did a U-turn and shot back up the hill.

Next day they did the same thing, but this time instead of the U-turn they stopped just across the hedge from me and stared. All the running about had stirred up the cattle egrets that invariably accompany them and that’s when I took this photo. I particularly like the devilish horns of the one animal peering out from the crowd.

I moved on and the cattle followed. We repeated this a couple of times before they decided they’d had enough.

On the third day, my appearance provoked only dull stares. Obviously the thrill of my presence had gone.

I grew up on the beach in Malibu . . . my dad’s dad emigrated here to the US from Fleet, England when he was 14. I moved to Washington State and milked cows on dairy farms there in my late teens/early 20s — sewed a tipi of canvass and lived in a cow pasture there . . .

So cow milking prepared me for my current career, farrier! I trim hooves and shoe horses :)) Have four homebred horses, take people on rides . . . my stallion, Mentor, lived on Molokai with me when he was a yearling.

That’s for sure :)) And from 2002 – 2016, I flew between Oahu/Molokai and California — 120 round trips over 14 years, two weeks out of every six in the Islands, doing my hoof work both here and there . . . But I’m all traveled out and home in the mountains of Southern California now — and I call my friends in Hawaii to over the phone now, to stay in touch.